Annotatio XLVII

”God sent a deep sleep upon Adam.” — Genesis 2:21

Thomas Cajetan, in his commentaries on Genesis, when in narrating he had come to this point, wrote that both the sleep of Adam and the production of the woman from Adam’s rib are to be taken not according to history, and as the letter itself sounds, but according to a mystery — not of allegory, but of parable.¹ For if it be understood according to the letter, that a rib was truly taken from Adam, one of two absurdities will follow: either that Adam was a monster before the rib was taken away, or [either that Adam was a monster before the rib was taken away,] or that he was maimed after the rib was taken from him. Both of which are most absurd: because either that rib was superfluous to the man, or necessary. If superfluous, then the man was monstrous; if necessary, then, it being taken away, the man was rendered maimed. Alfonso de Castro, in the second book Against Heresies, and Ambrose [Catharinus], Archbishop of Compsa, in the commentaries on Genesis and in the second book of the Annotations against Cajetan, assail this position² as a novelty unheard-of by Catholics, and heretical, and one which subverts the very foundations of our faith: because, if the truth of the present history is destroyed, it must needs be that there falls that great sacrament which Paul said is in Christ and in the Church — that is, that just as Eve was built up from the bones and flesh of Adam, so the Church [is built] from the bones and flesh of Christ. But if you destroy the first thing, which was in the letter, you overthrow also that which is contained under it. Thus they.

But Hugh of St. Victor, dissolving this very argument of Cajetan’s — which of old was used by those who, long before Cajetan, had scattered the seeds of this error — wrote thus in the book of Annotations on Genesis:³ “But as to what certain persons ask — whether Adam previously had more ribs in that side from which that rib was taken (because if so, then Adam had it as superfluous; but if not more, [but] only as many as he had in the other side, then he was diminished [by its loss]) — [the question] is frivolous: for neither are the teeth of boys, which are afterward changed, called superfluous, nor are they themselves, although they do not yet have the [full] increase of nature, judged to be diminished.” Thus far Hugh. Subscribing to whom, St. Thomas, in the first part of the Summa, question 92, article 3, says that that rib was of the perfection of Adam⁴ — not as he was a certain individual, but as he was the principle of the species: just as seed is of the perfection of the one generating, and yet is separated, for the procreation of children, by natural operation. Read the preceding annotation.